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  5. Lorinda A. Coombs

Lorinda A. Coombs, PhD, MSN, FNP-BC, AOCNP, FAAN

Associate Professor (Tenure Track)

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
School of Nursing
Campus Box #7460
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7460

Dr. Lorinda A. Coombs is a clinician scientist and practicing oncology nurse practitioner whose research brings patients’ values into treatment decisions for older adults with advanced cancer. She is an Associate Professor at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Nursing and a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. She also continues clinical practice as an advanced practice provider in medical oncology at the N.C. Basnight Cancer Hospital.

Dr. Coombs leads the development of the Values Assessment Tool (VAsT). She co-created VAsT with patients, care partners, clinicians, and a community advisory board to help oncology teams understand what matters most to patients when making treatment decisions. Supported by the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, her pilot work with women with metastatic breast cancer showed that VAsT was feasible and valued by patients. She is now extending this work to older adults with metastatic lung cancer as well as expanding it into international contexts within Korea. Her broader research uses mixed methods, cancer registry and claims data, and machine learning to study treatment decision-making, timely cancer diagnosis in underserved North Carolina communities, and the advanced practice workforce in cancer care. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles in journals including the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Cancer, npj Digital Medicine, and Psycho-Oncology.

Before joining UNC in 2020, Dr. Coombs practiced for more than 15 years as a hematology/oncology nurse practitioner in California and Utah, including at San Francisco General Hospital, Stanford Cancer Center, and Kaiser Permanente. She earned her PhD in Nursing and Health Policy from the University of California, San Francisco, and completed an NIH T32 postdoctoral fellowship in cancer, caregiving, and end-of-life care at the University of Utah.

She was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 2025 and received the Oncology Nursing Certification Corporation’s Advanced Oncology Certified Nurse of the Year Award the same year. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Advanced Practitioner Society for Hematology and Oncology and as an Associate Editor of Policy, Politics & Nursing Practice. At UNC, she teaches across the MSN, DNP, and PhD programs, serves as faculty on a T32 training grant, and mentors nursing, pharmacy, and medical students in oncology and palliative care research.

Research interests: shared decision-making · patient values and goals of care · geriatric oncology · palliative care · timely cancer diagnosis · advanced practice workforce

Education:

PhD, University of California, San Francisco
Post-Master’s FNP, University of California, Los Angeles
MSN, San Francisco State University
BA, University of Michigan

Specialties

Research Projects

Multilevel Determinants of Health

Characterizing Delays in Cancer Diagnosis for Underserved Populations in North Carolina

Lorinda A. Coombs, PhD, MSN, FNP-BC, AOCNP, FAAN